Routes that are traveled by vehicles may become damaged over time with extended use. For example, tracks on which rail vehicles travel may become damaged and/or broken. A variety of known systems are used to examine rail tracks to identify where the damaged and/or broken portions of the track are located. For example, some systems use cameras, lasers, and the like, to optically detect breaks and damage to the tracks. The cameras and lasers may be mounted on the rail vehicles, but the accuracy of the cameras and lasers may be limited by the speed at which the rail vehicles move during inspection of the route. As a result, the cameras and lasers may not be able to be used during regular operation (e.g., travel) of the rail vehicles in revenue service.
Other systems use ultrasonic transducers that are placed at or near the tracks to ultrasonically inspect the tracks. These systems may require very slow movement of the transducers relative to the tracks in order to detect damage to the track. When a suspect location is found by ultrasonic inspection, a follow-up manual inspection may be required for confirmation of potential defects using transducers that are manually positioned and moved along the track and/or are moved along the track by a relatively slower moving inspection vehicle. Inspections of the track can take a considerable amount of time, during which the inspected section of the route may be unusable by regular route traffic.
Other systems use wayside devices that send electric signals through the tracks. If the signals are not received by other wayside devices, then a circuit that includes the track is identified as being open and the track is considered to be broken. These systems are limited at least in that the wayside devices are immobile. As a result, the systems cannot inspect large spans of track and/or a large number of devices must be installed in order to inspect the large spans of track.
Other systems use human inspectors who move along the track to inspect for broken and/or damaged sections of track. This manual inspection is slow and prone to errors.